Users can now see recently scanned apps with Verify Apps from the settings menu, basically allowing them to view when some applications have been scanned by the functionality with a labeled time. Verify apps is a security measure that Google integrated into the Android software some time ago to help protect users from malicious apps, and while apps are initially scanned upon downloading, the verify apps check was so that a user’s device would consistently check for issues with an app every so often. Now Google is making it possible for users to actually see some of that functionality happening.
While the details of the function are still a bit limited, it’s certainly more information than users had before, although at any given time when looking at the list of recently scanned apps it only tells you what the last four apps were that were scanned, along with the time, and a number of how many other apps were scanned in addition to the four that are on display. You can’t actually tap on the “more apps” to see which are the other apps that were scanned, so you’re only left with the number of them. The recently scanned apps will of course also change the next time a scan is done if the apps that were scanned were different from before, and they likely will be as Verify apps should be cycling through whatever is installed on your device.
Verify apps is tied to Google Play Services so an update to Play Services that happened recently is likely the reason for the small change. To see the recently scanned applications, users can navigate to the phone’s initial settings menu, but then must scroll down to and tap on Google, then the security sub-menu from within the Google Menu, and from there they can finally tap on Verify apps which will list the recently scanned apps on the top, along with two toggle options. One for scanning devices for security threats, and one for improving harmful app detection. This is just one of the latest minor tweaks that Google has made to the Verify apps functionality, as they posted late last Summer that it would help to block all Quadrooter exploits.